O.M.G. Yeah: there’s no relevant history or intellectual tradition you need to learn about before you generously share your expert opinion with us.
Dude, you should have just let your sister do the talking. (But if you had let her have the last word, you wouldn’t be the Mansplainer of the Year!)
Good luck with that Ph.D. and that job search now!
Historiann 
May I say that D. M. Horn’s argument is probably the worst argument from etymology I have ever encountered? In any word that ends with “-ist,” the relation between root and suffix must be the same?
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Yeah–try that one out on saxophonist, pianist, or accompanist.
I think D.M. Horn learned a bunch of twelve-dollar words in grad school and thinks that obfuscatory language and context-free opinions = intellectual discourse. Because the world is whatever he says it is–a world in which women have accumulated a great deal of prestige and social power through volunteer caregiving, and he as a man has been unjustly deprived of this prestige and power. It’s also a world full of feminists with whom he agrees but who also “loathe any question about even the wording of their –ism” and are “dug into semantic fox-holes.”
Fascinatingly, it’s a world in which he admits at the very end of his tiresome 1,000+ word comment that “I do not claim to know much about the theory or the breadth of research in this field,” but still thought it was a great idea to hit “publish” on the comment anyway.
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Damn, her motherfucken brother is so goddamn longwinded and pedantic, I never even made it past the first paragraph. What a ridiculous douche!
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Hopefully, no one sane expects me to read the a$$source. Two fitting sayings from my childhood. If stupidity were a disease, Horn would have stayed in hospital all his life. If someone says that your sister turns tricks, not having a sister is not much of a defense.
Blip Horn!
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The saddest thing is that I’m willing to bet you’ll be proven wrong about the title of this post.
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I don’t know, nicoleandmaggie: the combination of ignorance and misplaced intellectual confidence on display here will be hard to beat. (But I’m sure some will try! Oh, yes.)
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I’ve come across many trolls on the internet, but this is the first time a troll has stuck his head up into the daylight and said something like this. “I am an aupair who can handle the whisky of scientific methods. Let me give you some straight talk about my sister, the venerable Dr. Horn. Her reply to me was less than intellectual–she repressed my questioning with a belittling reproach. If someone responds to my criticism of a system’s connotations with a response that is less than intellectual, then the system must be wrong. This follows logically. And all I wanted to do was compromise, because if we compromise, then we can dance if we want to. Now I need to get back to waiting for Men Without Hats to make a comeback. Only this event can save us from dogmatic posturing!”
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The fact that he doubled-down on the obstinance, after his sister laid out his case (more coherently)? It’s obvious whom mom loved best.
And this phrase chilled me to the bone:
“Having worked some time as an au pair for 3 children…”
Won’t someone think of the little ones? Please???
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(obstinence)
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He sounds like Ignatius Reilly in “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
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I didn’t make it past the MRA comment after reading the column. Ugh.
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H’Ann, you mean there is a HISTORY to ideas? They don’t just float in space? Oh! And what EngLitProfvsaid about etymology: I kept thinking about Marxists…)
Not sure I’d want to attend the next Horn family get-together, though.
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Why didn’t anyone ever argue that abolitionists were clearly only on the side of the abolition of slavery, and not on the side of justice and human rights for all? Why did we never seriously consider the anti-slaveowner prejudice inherent in the word abolitionist?
It’s a mystery of historic proportions.
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One of my (female) students used the word “feminist” yesterday in a small colloquium-style course–not as a self-descriptor, but as a subject matter descriptor–in a completely uncontroverted, un-anxious, un- “this word is going to be like throwing a live grenade into the discussion” manner, and the conversation just flowed on calmly and smoothly, which I found encouraging. From scattered observation over the years, I don’t think the reported undergraduate revolt against the concept has gone as far (or maybe lasted as long would be the better word) as is sometimes presumed.
Of sisters and Dunces: I read _Confederacy_ down to about the last ten pages thirty-some years ago at my sister’s house in Ohio. Then we went out to the movies and I left it on the stair bannister. When we returned, her dog had chewed it up; working–perversely, I thought–from the *back* end in toward the center! Sadly, I never went back and finished it
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I went and looked at the original article which is a tapestry of ass-hattery.
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That was truly amazing. Jaw-dropping. You know you’re in trouble (or you should know you’re in trouble) when you claim that you believe in equality of the sexes, but the only person who seems to agree with your larger point is a dude who decries “female chauvinism” that is apparently running rampant in our society. I particularly appreciate being told what’s wrong with my social justice movement from someone who evinces no actual knowledge of the real structural inequalities that women have to deal with. World of fail. I sure am glad I have a brother who is an actual feminist.
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